A lot of things of business value go like this, for example: go build this UI in React, etc. You don't need the ability to significantly return something back to academia to do that. You just need good coding mechanics.
Not the point: college is for CS. Not for "building on the work of others." You learn the basics that everyone needs to do the advanced work. If that isn't needed/useful then you need a vocational school instead of a CS program.
Making people do continual simple demos and nonsense programs instead of teaching them actual CS is BS. They can be simple programs, they don't need to build huge things, but what they build should reveal and teach them things beyond how to shift text around the screen.
